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Is interest
forbidden in Christianity and Judaism? If it is could you please
email me sources from the Bible (Old and New Testaments) to confirm
that.
Deuteronomy 23:20
forbids "lending upon interest". The practise is also
deplored in Ezekiel 22:12. Further references are in Ezekiel 18:8-9
and Psalm 15:5. The only violent act reported in the gospels to have
been committed by Jesus was chasing the money changers out of the
temple. The Churches were unanimous about the prohibition of
interest until Calvin in the early 16th century provided theological
justification for the money lenders by interpreting the difference
between brothers and strangers made in Deuteronomy 23:21 and arguing
that as with the arrival of Christianity the Jewish covenant had
ended and all Christians were in the category of gentiles or
strangers, the prohibition no longer applied. This is a typical
example of legal reasoning exploiting a loophole until the original
intention of an injunction has been perverted. Instead of extending
the benefit of non-usurious dealings to the wider world, Calvin sees
it as an outdated privilege standing in the way of economic
progress. Half a millennium later we see similar attempts at
perverting the Islamic prohibition of interest with usurious
non-Muslim banks trying to develop so-called Islamic banking models.
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